Ripley, Ohio

I’ve been camping in some prickly places, but I have managed to avoid puncturing a tire.  I’ve had just one flat so far and that was on Day One fifty miles into the ride in the urban wasteland of Gary a few miles from its Statue of Liberty.  

I took a thorn though to the fore finger of my right hand while clearing branches for my tent two nights ago.  It broke off leaving a fragment deeply embedded beneath the skin.  I spent several minutes trying to puncture the skin with a needle to pop it out, but the skin was too tough, and the thorn too deep and my pain threshold too low to accomplish the operation.  I decided to put it off to the next morning when I could soften the skin with hot water at the next rest room.

It came within ten miles.  After dousing my finger I sat outside off to the side of the service station continuing to probe the skin.  While I was dabbling away a young tow-headed boy approached with his mother.  I was too intent on my operation to realize I was the object of their attentions.  With my head still bowed the boy thrust a dollar bill at me and said, “This is for you.”  After I’d replied with a startled “thanks” his mother reached towards me with three quarters and said, “He wanted you to have this too.”  

I would have liked to have given the boy a sermon on how I was a man of means having an adventure and that his bike could provide him a similar adventure some time in the future, and in fact could take him anywhere as had mine, even to the tip of South America and across Australia and all over the world, but I knew it would fall on deaf ears.  Such words would have denied him and his mother the pleasure of helping the seemingly less fortunate.  A better response would have been to let them return to their car and come after them before they drove off with a five dollar bill to give to the boy as a reward for his good heartedness, but I didn’t think of that soon enough.  

It took a while longer, but I finally extracted the pesky thorn.  It was a great triumph when that black little fragment popped out.  I wasn’t entirely pain free, as I was reminded of the wound on those rare occasions when I had to depress my brake.  But it at least wasn’t the sharp prick of pain as it had been before.

The wind had switched from the north and was now blowing warm air from the south. By noon it was in the 90s and I was looking for an ice cold drink.  In the pre-virus days I would have been hoping for a McDonald’s and it’s one dollar self-serve all-you-can drink machines that also dispensed ice.  But I had yet to come upon a McDonald’s whose seating areas had opened.  Burger Kings in these parts were allowing patrons to come inside and eat, but McDonald’s remained drive through only.  I had ducked inside a Burger King the day before.  Most of its tables had been cleared out and it’s self-serve drink machine had been turned off, but not it’s air-conditioning.

I was desperate enough for an ice cold drink I was willing to avail myself of a McDonald’s  drive-through when I came upon one, even though I would be at the mercy of the amount of ice I got and there’d be no refill.  Before I entered the drive-through line an employee slipped out the front door for her smoke break.  I asked if her store had the dollar offer for any size of soft drink.  She confirmed they did and said rather than having to wait in line she’d go in and get me one.  When I dug out the dollar bill the young boy gave me, she declined it.

There was no shade to sit in and drink, so I went across the street to a service station.  As I sat there savoring the ice cold drink that I’d poured into my thermal water bottle, a guy working road construction wearing a reflective vest asked if he could buy me a cold drink.  I said thanks but I was fine.  

“Are you sure,” he persisted.  “There’s lots of two for ones in there.”

“If that’s the case, I’d be happy with anything.“

A couple minutes later he presented me with two twenty-ounce bottles of coke and put two dollars in my hand and said, “Get yourself something at McDonald’s.”

Before I was on my way a delivery man came over and handed me three boxes of cookies saying, “Here you go man.  I’ve got some extras you can have.”

The heat had amped up people’s generosity. I’d never experienced such a surge of goodwill.   These were the first offerings I’d had in a week since the first two ninety degree days.  And it didn’t stop.  An hour later when I took a break outside a small cafe a forty-year old guy surprised me with a twenty dollar bill.  Not five minutes later a similar guy handed me two fives and two ones.  I felt as if I were some celebrity raising money for a cause.  Or maybe someone had attached a “Homeless vet” sign to my bike.  This was getting serious.  I’d have to start setting these offering aside to donate to Adventure Cycling.  This corona virus had certainly softened hearts.  

But all these encounters had been quick in-and-outs.  Not a single one of these generous souls had lingered for a even a perfunctory “where are you going/where are you coming from,” wishing to minimize their contact with this creature who they thought had fallen on hard times, as if any more time with it would make them feel even more pity and make them want to do more.  But woe unto me to criticize them in any manner.  I greatly appreciated their sentiments, misdirected as they may have been.

I was skirting Cincinnati, as back in November of 2015 I gathered its eight still standing Carnegie branch libraries, all but one of which still functioned as libraries.  On my approach to Cincinnati from Xenia I stopped in Miamisburg for its Carnegie, now the Carnegie Center. It was set a good distance back from the road in a large park with a small fountain between it and the road.  It was constructed of red brick, some of which had been intricately placed in bands. The new library was off to the side.

I was happy to escape the increasing amount of traffic approaching Cincinnati and took advantage of a serene bike path along the Great Miami River that took me most of the way to Middleton and it’s Carnegie.  It was a sad site, all boarded-up and in great disrepair with vines growing up its walls and the roof collapsing.  It had once been a grand edifice with a side entrance to a “Lecture Room.”.  Down the steps to another side entrance a mattress betrayed a homeless encampment.

It was seventy-five miles to the next Carnegie on my list in Ripley down on the Ohio River.  On the way I passed the stately Carnegie in Lebanon that I dropped in on in April of 2011.  It is a rare one with a diagonal corner entrance.  A sign in the entry stated it was closed due to the virus.

Twelve miles before Ripley my route took me through Georgetown, just as had my ride in South America earlier in the year, where I ended up in Guyana’s Georgetown for its Carnegie.  There was no Carnegie in this Georgetown, just a sign announcing that it was the boyhood home of Ulysses S. Grant.  This came as a surprise, as Galena, Illinois claims Grant for its own, though he didn’t make it his home until 1860 at the age of 38.

As I approached the Carnegie in Ripley I spotted a thrilling sign out front saying it was open.  It was into its third week of being open.  It had only minimal restrictions—no more than ten people at a time and just one person at a time in its elevator.  Plastic barriers had been hung around the two check out desks, one in the original library and the other in its addition.  There was no one in the library when I arrived other than three librarians, all wearing masks.  It offered a most welcome refuge from the heat for a couple of hours.

Now it’s on to Gallipolis over one hundred miles away, following the Ohio River for half the distance to Portsmouth, whose domed Carnegie I visited in 2011.  Then I’ll leave the river and cut through hilly country, where I’ll truly be getting away from it all.  It ought to be the best cycling yet.